The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for securing multi-tenancy data in cloud-based storage environments.
The ever growing popularity of cloud storage implies that cloud-based storage service providers may need to sell/lease storage space to multiple tenants and then manage their respective storage needs while sharing the same physical storage devices. The tenants may be competitors and hence, the cloud-based storage service provider has to ensure data segregation so that each client may use and see only their respective data. However, the most advanced storage devices are based on grid technology where all data of all Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs) is spread across all disks/Flash components to allow for optimal Input/Output (I/O) parallelism and an inherit hot-spot free and hands-free work load balancing. To make things even more challenging, todays' storage devices are thin-provisioned so that space is allocated only when the space is needed and not reserved up-front.